Highlights

Jib KidderIV

Despite all noble efforts to keep up with the new music of a given year, it often seems the records that completely consume my listening world are the ones that I don’t hear until early in the proceeding year. For 2013/14, Jib Kidder’s (real name: Sean Schuster-Craig)IV is undeniably that record.

Like many of TMT’s favorite albums of 2013 and Schuster-Craig’s other work, IV relies heavily on the re-contextualizing power of sampling. There are elements of both Andrew Pekler’s artful deconstruction and Dean Blunt’s ad hoc appropriation in Schuster-Craig’s approach, but the music that he creates with these techniques bears little resemblance to either of those artists. Instead, Schuster-Craig repurposes indistinguishable bits of rock music as the accompaniment for his own infectious power pop. Part of what makes IV so remarkable is how seamlessly Schuster-Craig’s organic instrumentation and songwriting is used in conjunction with his sampling.

Like Dean Blunt’s The Redeemer, it’s possible to ignore the sampling element altogether because of the structural integrity of both artists’ songwriting, but closer inspection of tracks like “Coincidence,” “Living in U,” and “New Crimes” reveal the hidden mutant aspects of Schuster-Craig’s pop. “Coincidence’s” drums are clearly culled entirely from some drum solo breakdown and as a result sound totally fucked when focused on. Similarly, “Living in U” plays with the odd metrical possibilities of a re-articulated drum loop in the context of Americana tinged pop while “New Crimes” blurs the lines between the acoustic space of a sampled loop and live instrumentation with it’s reverberant shoegaze. All of these moments are handled with the utmost subtlety and Schuster-Craig’s ability to imperceptibly create bedroom pop out of the forgotten moments in others’ songs illustrates the depth of his sampling prowess. It may be too late for IV to be your favorite record of 2013, but now seems like the perfect time for it to dominate your 2014 listening habits.

“black vacuum”

Hot off their lost offerings CS EP on Moon Glyph last year, clipd beaks continues on (!!!!!), and this time they wielding a “black vacuum.” Get sucked into the sheer UV-gaze vocals as the visitor emerges through camera lens’d sun-spots. What dimension does this visitor appear from? Why does it wear such a magnificent helmet? Visitor holography? “Yo, you’re a trip, pal! Want to chill with me here and feel out this ‘black vacuum’ I’ve been reeling?” you ask agreeing with the steady drum beat, and the visitor is totally down with the idea.

Yet, as you’re listening together, worlds and dimensional lines seem to melt and blend with lingering guitar: textures, colors, shapes; YOUR shape; the VISITOR’s shape. The visitor’s gaze gives you a chill state of being, though. Vibrancy can’t even explain the feelings your experiencing while madness washes over you and out into calm. Be within. Be together. Belong!

“Waterfalls”

Some cover versions are a blurry photocopy of last year’s bare arse from the Christmas party, cashed in and pinned up, embarrassing for everyone involved: progenitor, distributor, ‘interpreter,’ No such debauchery with Laura Groves, formally Blue Roses, originally Laura Groves in the first place. This is a photo of a photo, developed in its own light. Video director Laura Coulson bears this in mind with her beautiful single shot dark-room portrait; allowing Groves’ to play with each of McCartney’s potentially cloying words, clearly deeply appreciative of the song, yet sometimes allowing a coy smile at its occasionally baffling lyrical oddities (“Some big friendly polar bear might want to take you home” – see original video for wonderful green screen fireworks display with said polar bear). She render’s his smooth Rhodes bed into something all encompassing, almost claustrophobic, finding the core of a ballad where TLC found an anthem.

Groves looks and sounds happily in control of her frankly remarkable voice, which we’ll no doubt hear more of soon, following last year’s Thinking About Thinking EP.

Split

Though it never died in the first place, the recent “revival” of the cassette tape in our collective (un)consciousness owes much to the efforts of Mike Haley A.K.A. Wether — co-host of the Tabs Out podcast, and founder of 905 Tapes. You may have scoped the Tabs Out posse’s columns on AdHocFM (Who Has Tapes Anymore?) and this very site (Laser Focus), and then confused relatives over brunch with requests to unearth the ancient tape deck from the crawlspace (“Remember now, there’s no ‘shuffle’ feature on this one.” *wink* *grimace*). 905’s catalog reads like a Who’s Who of Champion Zoners, encompassing everyone from Mick Barr to Derek Rogers, Quicksails to Merzbow, M. Geddes Gengras to Helm (damn [Editor’s note: DAMN]). The label’s new batch, decked out with Sailor Jerry-core classic tattoo J-cards, continues to deliver the goods.

If anyone is exploiting the experimental underground’s cassette proclivity to the fullest, Headboggle (born Derek Gedalecia) is that human being. The restless multi-multi-instrumentalist’s third physical release with 905 finds him conjuring synth-noise chaos from his arsenal of modular, analog, and homemade electronics. Sir Boggle’s ecstatic, randomized bleeps and confounding “song” structures, conveyed to our brains by his hi-fidelity recording practices, beg comparisons to electronic music forefathers like Morton Subotnick while sounding unlike pretty much anything released in this decade / century. Flip over the tape for thirty minutes of eclectic improv from solo synth wizard Collin McKelvey. His live session cycles through enough mutant tones, churning rhythmic passages, and squalls of ‘verb-drenched noise to keep true heads engaged for its whole mind-expanding duration.

ÜBRMNSCH-BLWY-PLX

What exactly have we come to expect from the anonymous online beat-maker, particularly when they chose to adopt such a weird and dubious title? Probably not much. Not when there are new producers causing havoc every other day at the Choco HQ with their own personal, refined, or sentimental touch to this month’s hottest micro shit storm.

Gunge. Well if this isn’t another butt-plug in the face of expectation. Dripping with cheesey guitar solos, filthy trap snares, pitch-fucked R&B vocals, unstoppable happy hardcore breaks and a hint of transgressive hip-hop… Wait. That’s all just baggy genre-tagging; an attempt at turning this outrageous offering into something familiar, something we can relate to. No. The latest release from “electronic label concept” Interscape is another epic failure for expectation. This thing is unhinged.

Download ÜBRMNSCH-BLWY-PLX for free over at the Interscape Bandcamp or stream below. It’s Wednesday. Melt yourself.

ßITCH $HIFT

Crimin’ and dimin’ on the internet. Sluggin’ dem bullet speeds into sludge. Grippin’ all the grime a Boy could Froot. Hefty bags full of skulls. Making it hail diamonds into a vat of molasses. Uzi fire snappin’ spines in slow motion. Jazz’zz on that straight stutter. Smashin’ out the freshest features: KEIKI, DEPRESSIVE TONGUE POSSE: SHARXXX & AGGRESSIVE PROFESSOR, THE SECRET PROVIDER, and H E X X X O F F N D R. Grids of smoke hangin’ low in the air. Hundo$ floating on booze poured out a 40oz. Tryin’ to walk long enough without crawling. Sobriety, amirite?

Boy Froot continues on his wobbly journey, yo: stewed-brain style lyrics are phucked with just as reluctantly confident as ever before. But this time, he’s switchin’ gears with ßITCH $HIFT. How? Well, you gotta listen, sucka! Stream ßITCH $HIFT below by Boy Froot, and take a trip into the steamy world of digital underground: